Exchanging Guidance
Giving
Guiding movers through a personal journey paved with images
is very fulfilling and inspiring for me.
Bouncing back and forth each others explorations, ideas and words
opens up a dynamic path to create new poems in motion.
For the participants and for myself as well.
These one-on-one workshops run smoothly now
and each session morphs into what each participant needs
in the moment.
A genuine encounter of trust happens.
Through this safe place of sharing movements and memories
a lot of dance material is spontaneously created.
And it is fantastic!
But since I am making a film with these experiences
there are also a lot of filmed material produced.
Sorting through all of it can become overwhelming…
“Less is more” my mentors always have to remind me:
because I have a tendency to bring too much to the table.
Keeping movement explorations
to the planned sections to be filmed
with a minimalistic approach is helping.
All the extra is an add-on to our encounter:
new tools in the participant’s movement practice.
Receiving
On a personal level,
moving with participants allows my body to come back to dance
progressively.
Because I am focused on Renee, lolly b, Nicola or Samantha’s dancing,
I find myself doing movements a little deeper and wider
during each dance session.
Acknowledging what is there or not.
Most and foremost:
my fear of “breaking/dislocating” is slowly fading away.
I am regaining trust in my body;
integrating the new mechanical hip joint as part of me.
Embracing this otherness within
as I move with others outside.
Highlighting Embodied Memories
As I “collage” the film together,
I sense each participant’s embodied memories
- seeping through like shadows on the screen;
- becoming interconnected smoke figures;
- weaving around and through each other…
Like seeing through slowly blinking eyes
making worlds appear and disappear,
morphing bodily landscapes into fantasy lands…
Crossing ages, shapes, types, roles…
During editing,
I love playing on the screen with their presences:
having them encounter,
experiencing a “togetherness-apart”,
threading their bodies and memories side by side,
morphing into each other
then becoming themselves again, stronger.
I am nothing without movement. No movement is death. Even in stillness I am moving invisibly. What animates me is how trees grow in a crevice; how mountains stand, catch the clouds and crumble; how water falls into rivers…
~ Renée Poisson
Together Apart
Through a collage-like editing,
I sculpt all participants
into one blended presence
then have them reappear as multiple:
filled with the encountered memories of each other.
I recreate each presence as plural in their own singularity.
Each of them, a plural moving entity.
